§ Statement of Purpose

The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787. Knowing and preserving those understandings, what might be called the unwritten constitution of our nation, is vital to preserving constitutional government. Without them, the bare words of the Constitution are just a Rorschach ink-blot that politicians, educators, and judges can interpret to mean anything they wish.

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, to the Officers of the First Brigade, Third Division, Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798.

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Sunday, December 12, 2010

Liberal-Progressive Legacy

Liberal-progressives, late in the 19th century and early in the 20th, believed that political corruption at all levels could be rooted out by introducing professional management. Thus was born the city manager concept of municipal government. Professionalism, in the burgeoning age of science, was presumed, unlike politics, to represent disinterested public service.

Provenance of liberal-progressivism’s romance with supposedly professional management goes back to the inception of socialism in France. In the first decades of the 1800s, Henri de Saint-Simon and his followers, heavily influenced by civil engineers, proposed that all levels of business and government should be placed under the guidance of trained, professional management. They were confident that efficiency and productivity would increase. More importantly, professional management would facilitate imposition of state planning designed to redistribute wealth and create an egalitarian, socialistic political state.

The story of Bell, California, illustrates the vulnerability of that conception in the hands of professional politicians who cozy up to teachers’ unions and other public employees labor unions. In Bell’s case, it proved no barrier to gross corruption at the highest level of city government.